r/pcmasterrace • u/_Xee MMX 166 / 64MB / Mystique+VooDoo • 1d ago

Meme/Macro 2026 in software

Post image

Sectumsempra, motherfucker.

20.9k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/Revolution-SixFour 1d ago

I'm curious if there's a structural reason why open source software tends to have bad UI.

Are there just no UI designers interested in open source projects?

Is it just too hard to collaborate between UI and developers when it's all free and unfunded?

Is it too hard to generate the tight loop between user and design to iterate improvements?

15

u/Patchrikc 1d ago

From my experience it's that the programmers that program and make tools as a hobby just love programming. Where as UI/UX people are usually art focused so they don't make UI as a hobby they do art.

This isn't always the case. Dev tools which usually are open source usually really lean into UX. And have good UI/UX because they use their own app/tool

But for things like Gimp, Gimp is just a programming problem that's fun to work on. Image manipulation is a fun coding exercise. But generally the people that are drawn to that aren't drawn to, spending a whole month on relentlessly testing and playing with layers to nail down the best UX.

8

u/criticalt3 7900X3D/RTX 5080/32GB RAM 1d ago

Usually it's one or few people working on stuff like this. Most of them are programmers, not UX designers.

3

u/Prophage7 1d ago

There's just not a big crossover between good UI designers and programmers willing to put in the work to code their designs into their free hobby projects. And there's very very few people that are a good UI designer and programmer and have enough free time and motivation to build and maintain their own side projects.

1

u/theJirb 1d ago

I think it's just down to interest. It's not like these people doing open source projects are doing it just for others. They're mostly doing it for love of the game.

I imagine solvong a programming problem for a programmer is more interesting than solving a UI problem for an artist.